With only nine weeks to go before the start of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver British media attention – such as it is – is equally divided between current skeleton bob star Shelley Rudman and the useless 1980s ski jumper Eddie Edwards.

Rudman's victory in Cesena last weekend took her to the top of the World Cup rankings. The Eagle, meanwhile has been called in by the British Columbia Tourist Authority to carry the Olympic flame as it passes through Winnipeg. Given the Cheltenham plasterer's legendary clumsiness you can only hope the local fire department is on full alert.

The fact that Edwards and Rudman are being afforded the same coverage in the build-up to Vancouver may strike some as a little peculiar. After all, Rudman won a thrilling silver medal in Turin three years ago and has a very good chance of getting gold this time, while Edwards finished last in Calgary in 1988 and has spent his time since having a hit record in Finland, going bankrupt and getting married.

Edwards looks somewhat different now than he did in his heyday. He has had plastic surgery on his chin and corrective surgery on his eyes. But though the Cosmo Smallpiece spectacles and the Bob Carolgees moustache have gone, The Eagle still retains his mystical fascination for the British public. This morning I carried out a scientific survey with all the members of that constituency I spoke with – the postman, a lady from a local company whose representatives are currently in my area and would be delighted to give me a free, no-obligation quotation, and some bloke from Ryton who called up by mistake wanting to book a mobile disco for Our Laura's 18th.

I can reveal that in 100% of cases the name Shelley Rudman elicited no response at all (save for from the telesales woman who ventured that she wasn't sure but wasn't he "that Yank basketball bloke who dressed in women's pants and had a thing with Madonna?"), while Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards produced generous chuckles and comments along the lines of "Eeh, hey, he was a right character, that fella".

Next year filming begins on a movie of The Eagle's life starring Rupert Grint. No movie about Rudman has so far been scheduled. Indeed, It's hard to avoid the notion that the supply teacher from Pewsey in Wiltshire might have grabbed more attention if she'd had missing front teeth, a squint and gone down the mile-long ice-track at the sort of speed normally associated with Ricky Hatton leaving the eat-as-much-as-you-want buffet. An ironic nickname – The Rudmanator – would have been an added bonus, obviously.

Some will feel this situation tells us a whole lot about the British attitude to sport, and possibly life in general, and start complaining about how in this country we are more comfortable with failure than success. In fact, I believe it tells us a whole lot more about the Winter Olympics.

The Winter Games has traditionally provided a sanctuary for plucky losers, unlike its summer counterpart. Sure Eric the Eel and Paula the Crawler briefly made the headlines in Sydney and a few of us remember Charles Olemus, the Haitian 10,000m runner who held up the 1976 Games in Montreal with affection, but Walt Disney Corporation didn't make a successful motion picture about any of them. It did about the 1988 Jamaican bobsleigh team.

It is easy to see how this situation has arisen. After all, anybody can be rubbish at running or crap at long jump, but it takes a certain style to be hopeless at luge, or slack at ski jumping. The former Olympic figure skater turned Canadian cabinet minister Otto Jelinek once described luge as "the ultimate laxative". Generally speaking most people prefer not to involve themselves in sports where are quite so many ambulances at the finish.

Lamine Guèye, who became president of the Senegalese Ski Federation when still a teenager, possibly because he was the one who founded it, took part in the men's downhill at three Games. Summing up his first experience in 1984, during which he sailed down the slopes in Sarajevo looking like a man with two dead legs pursuing a marauding tortoise, he said: "We have no word for downhill in Senegalese because we have no mountains. I was so afraid I almost threw up. I have fully tested the safety measures and can tell you that they work."

In 1984 US TV viewers got behind the Puerto Rican luger George Tucker, a portly 36-year-old New York-based physicist who was introduced to the crowd in Sarajevo as "George Turkey". "That guy knows more English than he's letting on," Tucker joked later, proving that the British don't have a monopoly on self-deprecating losers.

Thankfully in Vancouver there is room for the brilliantly fast Shelley Rudman and the frankly not that quick at all, but undoubtedly courageous Kenyan cross-country skier, Philip Boit. In 1998 Boit came last in the 10km event and the medal ceremony had to be delayed because the winner, Bjorn Daehlie, insisted on waiting at the finish line in freezing temperatures to cheer Boit on and give him a hug. Daehlie won 12 Olympic medals and 17 world titles. His gesture wasn't a celebration of failure, but of humanity.